Chapter 7
Buckinghamshire, England, June 2013 - Liv
I land back at home in the Entrance Hall and breathe a sigh of relief that no one is waiting for me. Hopefully Devon and Cole took care of it for me. I should probably go and find one of them to see what excuse they made up for my absence. I turn to head upstairs when I find myself face to face with Cade. I have very little bond with him due to the circumstances, so he still has the ability to practically sneak up on me.
“Cade,” I say cautiously, not wanting him to bolt. I have things I need to say, again, and this time he has to listen. He is looking more than a little ill and I just can’t have this anymore.
“Come with me,” he says briskly. “We need to talk.”
Finally, he is willing to listen and hopefully open up as well. I follow him eagerly into the library and he shuts the door quietly. I wait as he gathers himself, he seems nervous and now I am not so sure he is going to tell me what I want to hear. He turns to me with a look of such agony that I want to go and hold him, but I know he will just push me away, or worse. I step forward anyway to show him that if he wants the contact, I am here for him. He doesn’t back away, in fact he steps forward as well. My heart leaps into my throat, but I daren’t hope just yet that he is coming around. He reaches for me and I let him, staying where I am, not wanting to move in case I scare him off. With an agonizing cry, he grips my arms, sinking his claws deep into me.
The shock of what he has done slows my brain down for just a second and I bring my arms up to get him off me, but it is one second too long. I feel Remiel behind me and I know I am done for. Cade has lured me into a trap and without the ability to Astral my arse out of here, I am at Remiel’s mercy. He runs his own damaging claws across the top of my back, and I feel my entire body start to go numb. I can’t Astral, I can’t pull up any magick with my numb hands, I can’t even fight them off. I lose all of my strength and Remiel catches me as my legs lose all feeling and my knees buckle. The only part of me that is still working is above where he had clawed me, that is, my head. I try to focus on Cade to blast him across the room with my eyes, but they start to go blurry as Remiel takes over from Cade and he digs his claws into me. The pain is unbearable, even though I have no sensation in my extremities, I somehow feel it.
“How could you?” I whisper to Cade.
“I had to!” he yells at me in anguish. “You have left me no choice. I have to break this bond, and this is the only way.”
“By be-betrayal,” I say on the verge of passing out.
The last thing I hear is him saying, “I can’t live like this with you. I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
I awake to a soft voice calling my name. “Aefre,” he says. “Time to wake up.”
I blink my eyes open and my vision clears after a few moments. I have no idea where I am. I look around in panic and try to sit up, but I am completely immobilized. It all comes crashing back to me as I see Remiel’s face come into view.
Cade.
He betrayed me to break his bond with me. He hates me that much for what I did to him, he offered me up to the one creature I had, thus far, successfully been avoiding and who wants me dead more than anything else in these Realms. If I was capable of tears, I would shed some, because my heart is breaking. I turn my head and try to take in my surroundings. I am in a light gray-colored cave, lying on a large rock. There is a slight mist floating about and it looks cold. I get the image of what it would be like to live in an igloo. I assume though that I am not in the North Pole, but in fact the Spirit Realm. I try to wiggle, but I have no body. Or at least that is what it feels like. I feel like just a head and it is most disconcerting. If I weren’t so afraid, I would probably laugh about it.
“You used him to get to me,” I accuse Remiel and he shrugs.
“All I needed was a second with your guard down, and he gave it to me. He took his time though. I have been waiting months for this,” he says.
“Yes, I know,” I say through gritted teeth. “I had hoped this day would never come.”
“Don’t be too sad, dear Aefre. I told you before I am sure I don’t have to drain you to get enough power to rise,” he says, confident his words are reassuring, but I am here to tell you…not so much.
“Rise?” I ask then. I had never really given much thought to what exactly would happen to him once he drank from me. I suppose I just assumed he’d become a living thing again.
“Yes, rise. How else do you expect me to do this?” he asks, shaking his head at my apparent denseness.
I try to shrug, but then remember I have no shoulders. Or at least no shoulders I can feel. “Explain it to me, so at least I know what I am dying for,” I say with a false bravado. Truth be told, I am stalling him on the off chance that Cade felt so bad about his betrayal that he went to CK and confessed, and my husband is now moving Heaven and Earth to get to me. I doubt it though.
I think he knows what I am doing as he gives me an indulgent smile and indicates something at his feet that I can’t see from my horizontal position on this rock.
“My body,” he says. “I have, over the centuries, found each and every piece that Tiamat removed and buried in the four corners of the globe. Wasn’t an easy task, and I could never find my head.” He looks so perplexed by that and it sounds so funny, I actually do laugh out loud, it’s just too hard not to. “Indeed,” he says with a narrow-eyed look at me. “Anyway, as it turns out, it was in the one place that I would never have thought of and wouldn’t have been able to get to.”
“The Dragon Realms?” I ask.
“No, you would have thought that, wouldn’t you? No, it was in Hunter headquarters in Rome. Tiamat must have somehow got them to hide it for Her all this time,” he reveals.
“Cade got it for you,” I state then, a sudden realization hitting me that this was not just a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was quite the elaborate plan.
“He did. He brought it to me a few days ago. I was just waiting for the go-ahead from him,” he says.
A few days ago? So, that is where he had been all this time. Trying to get Remiel’s head back. Makes sense that I couldn’t trace him, if he was being cloaked by someone so powerful. And it also makes sense now why he came back. Not to accept who he is, but to throw me to the original Vampire so he can resurrect himself.
“If Cade is expecting our tie to be broken, he is expecting you to kill me. So, which is it, Remiel? Am I going to die or not?”